What is the theoretical horizon within which contemporary practice is understood?

Art Now
Cuahtemoc Medina's "Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses"

Note the comment made below refers to the post made previous to this updated version

In ‘Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses’, Cuahtemoc Medina questions where contemporary art sits within the society now. He articulates a concept that contemporary art has become the last refuge for political and intellectual radicalism (Medina 6). He convincingly argues for this position and in the end I am made aware contemporary art is not only a physical shell but a nurturing physical shell, that harbours ‘leftist thought to circulate as a major pubic debate’ (6). This is interesting when we think about different artists engaging with what could be defined as the left leaning theories of post-Marxism and deconstruction critique as a drive force and a touchstone behind their practice. The so-called radical discourses still exist within the framework of academic journals and such but struggles to stretch beyond this context. Whereas in contemporary art, the capacity to open these discourses up had been proven. The models of participatory form of exhibitions, artist talks and discussion panels initiated by art institutions powerfully bring intellectual radicalism together.

However when Medina mentions the concept contemporary art is the new aristocratic populism (Medina 2) I disagree with this position. It sounds like Medina is trying to stuff ‘contemporary art’ into a suitcase of existing political form; populism. This term populism could be understood as an affect created by a discourse that promises unrealistic solutions to a problematic democratic procedure. (Blom 28)
This position is rather naïve in trying to view art as an expressive realm expecting an affect to be created ‘for’ the people, seems passive. Medina’s notion of art as populism is what the Russian avant-garde artists of the past such as Dziga Vertov had envisioned; making art that exists for people. Instead in the context of contemporary art, public exists for art to happen. As evident in artist Superflex’s engagement, the social within real and economic time triggers artistic production to be materialised. (Blom 35)

-Cuahtemoc Medina’s article was published in online journal e-flux, famous for being autonomous from other art institutional affiliations,
Medina’s background as art historian and a critic of Latin American art adds socialist insight, meets e-flux’s format, resulting in Elven Theses.


Medina, Cuahtemoc. “Contemp(t)orary: Eleven Theses”, e-flux journal, #12, 01/2010, accessed from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/103

Blom, Ina. “‘Until the Principles of Form are applied to Democracy…’, Avant-garde Art and Populist Imagination”. The Populism Reader New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2005